Maybe not. Today, there are only a few ways that you can go about removing that unpleasant tattoo. If you would like to take it off because it looks like it was done on a bus, or even because you’re no more into your old favorite group, or because you’ve determined that a butterfly does not really signifies you, you can surely find several way of eliminating it for good.

Obviously, it may perhaps charge you to get rid of the unpleasant tattoo! As you may expect, tattoo removal is not fully easy, and can sometimes be really high-priced subsequently. In a perfect world, the removal would be the cost of the tattoo itself or something similar, but regrettably, reality doesn’t work that way.

The most common kind of removal, laser removal, is also the most expensive type that is generally utilized. We will not enter into so many specifics, however it simply functions like this: pulses of light are sent through the laser to your skin, where they break up the ink, allowing it to be harmlessly absorbed into your whole body. This certainly eliminates the looks from your skin in the process. The downside is that this can take various therapies, at anywhere from a couple hundred to many hundred dollars for every treatment.

An inexpensive way is removal cream, but it’s not nearly as powerful or quick to work as laser treatments are. Tattoo removal by using a removal cream is a dicey topic, as many are skeptical as to how well it functions. Evidently though, lots of have had accomplishment with it, mainly because it absorbs into your skin and breaks up the ink, equally as laser removal does.

Tech: As if viruses, spyware and the like aren’t bad enough
If you go online, it’s a certainty you’ve faced some sort of online threat — viruses, spyware, adware, etc.
Read more on The Capital Times

Surely you’ve heard of Shinji Mikami, right? He’s basically “the Resident Evil guy,” and he’s got 3D on the brain. He told Famitsu, that famous Japanese video game magazine, that he wants to disband his current studio (Straight Story) and form a new one, one for creators, by creators (as opposed to one by run by know-nothing businessmen). This new studio, in a perfect world, would create a 3D horror game.

There’s a few obstacles. One, pretty much nobody owns a 3D TV yet—didn’t they just come out the other day? That, and they’re a little on the expensive side. Your average gamer, who only just recently embraced HDTV (though I got my first HDTV in time for World Cup 2006, and I have no such desire to upgrade to a 3D TV for World Cup 2010), is a little while away from shelling out the dough for 3D.

Plus, there’s that small issue of actually forming the studio.

Now, about that 3D horror game:

When it comes to my personal desires, I’d like to make a true-3D horror game, something where you’d use glasses like in the Avatar film. It’s been my goal since the original Resident Evil to be the first in the industry to make a 3D game. There needs to be a large 3D television-owning userbase before that can happen, but I always like trying out new things first.

My only experience with 3D gaming was at some EA event two weeks ago, playing Battlefield: Bad Company 2. It was just OK, nothing to freak out over.

The convergence of sportand technology! I don’t know, I think it’s cool. So, here’s another. This is the Finale Madrid, and it will be used at the UEFA Champions League final in Madrid this May. In a perfect world, the game will be played between Real Madrid and Barcelona—I will lose my mind if that happens.

Like other soccer balls (the Adidas Jabulani and the Nike T90 Ascente), there’s a lot going on in here. You see the stars? Somehow, Adidas has managed to make that completely inseparable from the ball itself—it’s not just painted on there. That helps ensure the ball’s flight is as unobstructed as possible. The ball keeps the PSC Texture as seen in previous balls. It’s the golf ball effect: golf balls have dimples in order to steady the flight, and so does the Finale Madrid.

Again, the UEFA Champions League final will be played in Madrid (Real Madrid’s home stadium, the Santiago Bernabéu, to be exact) on May 22. I will be completely unreachable during the game.

UPDATE Oh my God, Real Madrid has been knocked out of the Champions League by Olympique Lyon of France. Can anyone give me a ustream link to La Rambla in Barcelona? I can only imagine they’re partying like it’s 1999 in Catalunya right now.

Whoa. It seems that our amigos over at Laptop Magazine had a bit of a run-in with an iBuyPower laptop, and that nasty little cut was the result. IBuyPower’s response? “Yikes, we need to look into that, one moment please.”

So the deal is that the “W” in the word iBuyPower peels off in less than 1 percent of Battalion Touch CZ-10 gaming laptops. The logo, which is aluminum, was able to slice right through Laptop’s skin, leaving the battle wound you see there. It’s not something you’d want to deal with, no.

If there’s a silver lining to this story, it’s that, after some digging around, iBuyPower was able to identify the defect, and has gone ahead and fixed it. In a perfect world that means, should you decide to plop down the $999 for the laptop, you shouldn’t have to worry about walking away with needing to go to the emergency room.

And if you already own one of these laptops, it wouldn’t hurt contacting iBuyPower to see if they can replace it with a new, less dangerous one.

Windows 7 users would be well-advised to block outgoing ports 139 and 445. Microsoft has confirmed the existence of a vulnerability that affects SMB in Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 RC2. Worst case scenario: you connect to a malicious server then it crashes your PC.

The beauty here is that, in a perfect world, these ports would be blocked by default, making the exploit much less troubling. Let’s say you’re messing around on your computer, and all of a sudden Windows (or your firewall of choice) prompts you to open port 445 for a connection. So you say to yourself, “Hmm, I’m pretty sure my game of chess doesn’t need to access an SMB share to work properly, so I’m going to go ahead and deny that port-open request.”

But that’s now how the real world works.

It comes down to this: block those two ports when you’re not actively using them. No problems.

I could make some sort of snide remark about this being the first of many (maybe!) Windows 7 exploits, but let’s face it: when you’re dealing with so many lines of code, you’re bound to find a few bugs in there.

Oh, and Microsoft hasn’t said when it plans to patch the exploit. Presumably it will do so with its next big first Tuesday of the month patch day.

via Slashdot

Windows 7 users would be well-advised to block outgoing ports 139 and 445. Microsoft has confirmed the existence of a vulnerability that affects SMB in Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 RC2. Worst case scenario: you connect to a malicious server then it crashes your PC.

The beauty here is that, in a perfect world, these ports would be blocked by default, making the exploit much less troubling. Let’s say you’re messing around on your computer, and all of a sudden Windows (or your firewall of choice) prompts you to open port 445 for a connection. So you say to yourself, “Hmm, I’m pretty sure my game of chess doesn’t need to access an SMB share to work properly, so I’m going to go ahead and deny that port-open request.”

But that’s now how the real world works.

It comes down to this: block those two ports when you’re not actively using them. No problems.

I could make some sort of snide remark about this being the first of many (maybe!) Windows 7 exploits, but let’s face it: when you’re dealing with so many lines of code, you’re bound to find a few bugs in there.

Oh, and Microsoft hasn’t said when it plans to patch the exploit. Presumably it will do so with its next big first Tuesday of the month patch day.

via Slashdot

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(Credit:
Microsoft

2009 is suddenly a holiday of racers. If you don’t believe that, consider the trifecta that dropped–or will drop–shortly: Need For Speed: Shift, Dirt 2, and Microsoft’s holiday tentpole Forza Motorsport 3. All of them promise realistic physics, blazing speeds, and tons of customization, but NFS: Shift and Dirt 2 are multiplatform, while Forza Motorsport 3 is an Xbox 360 first-party exclusive. For my money, though, I’ll take Forza 3. After playing all three, the newest Forza has, surprisingly, won me over–not with realism, but with fun.

I say surprisingly because “simulation racers” generally lie in a calcified place among the hearts of the mainstream gamers: the hundreds of factory-immaculate car models and pitch-perfect world racing circuits, along with the endless class licenses and intricate engine tune-ups, can turn most gamers off completely. Right here in the CNET offices, I told a colleague I was playing Forza 3, and that I actually enjoyed it. “Really?” he asked, somewhat disbelieving. It’s assumed that Gran Turismo and Forza will be inaccessible to those who don’t appreciate racers, just like Madden often erects a wall between NFL fans and gamers and the rest of the world.

I am a casual racer, and Forza 3 sucked me in.

Its first success was employing a calm British man to talk to me. Much like LittleBigPlanet, a gentle voice of authority (although in this case, not Stephen Fry) welcomed me, showed me the basic ropes, and told me everything was going to be all right. Rather than worry about detailed car controls and under-the-hood tinkering, a simple press of a few A and B buttons got me right into a season-long circuit of races. The voice tutorials gently tailed off naturally, until I had the ropes completely. Suddenly I realized that I had been playing for several hours, and was itching to complete just one more race challenge to unlock more credits. That’s when I realized that, fundamentally, Forza 3 is a success.
…

Matchday Two of the UEFA Champions League begins tomorrow. You probably already know this, because, really, who doesn’t love the Champions League? Exactly. But unless you have DirecTV (here in the U.S.), you’re stuck with whatever games are on the Fox networks. These games primarily feature the English teams, because, I guess, the idea is that “Americans speak English, so they probably like English teams.” Maybe it’s a ratings thing, I don’t know. (There’s a point to all of this, believe me.) There’s a company based out of Barcelona called Flumotion that has developed a new, maybe even better, way to watch the Champions League online. If you’re at all familiar with a DVR, then you’re familiar with the company’s new setup.

The company hooked up with Aragón Televisión to develop a new streaming solution for Champions League games. You can pause the live feed, go make a sandwich, then come back and A) resume the video from where you left off, or B) resume from the live feed itself. I don’t know why you’d pick option B, since option A is kinda The Whole Point of DVRs.

Then Flumotion added all sorts of stats to the side there, so it’s not unlike viewing an ESPN GameCast.

(Flumotion actually helped Real Madrid stream the introductions of Kaká and Cristiano Ronaldo earlier in the year. I watched both streams!)

In a perfect world, Flumotion would hook up with Fox Soccer Channel here in the U.S., and offer this type of fancy streaming. That way, if you’re at the office but still want to see the game, well, you can, and you can go on your lunch break and not miss a single kick of the ball.

It does seem to be Europe-only (if not Spain-only), but it’s something to keep an eye on.

And if there is a God, I’d like to see Real Madrid v. Barcelona as the final this year, and see Barcelona totally dismantle the “Florenteam” at their home stadium. That would be outstanding.

Oh, also. That’s Olympique Lyonnais, not Olympique de Marseille in the photo there, Flumotion. Presumably other nerds have already pointed this out to you.

There’s two ways to look at the story that many of the country’s biggest ISPs have refused government stimulus money for broadband infrastructure investment. One, the ISPs patently don’t need the money, and are more than capable of delivering broadband to as many Americans as possible with their own capital. Two, the ISPs could use the money, but they’d prefer not to accept it lest they be beholden to all sorts of government-imposed restrictions, one of which relates to net neutrality.

Let’s take the first one, that the ISPs, including Comcast, AT&T, and Verizon, have a sufficient amount of capital to invest and build the country’s broadband infrastructure. (I write this using Cablevision’s Optimum Online Ultra, which is pretty much unnecessarily fast.) Since they have the capital, they don’t need to accept any government stimulus money, unlike, say, GM, which was about two minutes away from bursting into flames had it not received sweet, sweet government loans. That really is a Perfect World, Kumbaya scenario, I think. If the ISPs are so flush with cash, how come people complain on a daily basis about how rubbish Comcast is; how come they have to impose bandwidth restrictions on connections? If their networks are so robust—made robust, mind you, with all that money they supposedly have lying around—then they shouldn’t have to worry about Timmy High School Student streaming tons of video all day long.

Hence, the second way to look at this, that the ISPs damn well could use the money to invest in this country’s broadband infrastructure. No one expects rural Georgia to be zipping along the Internet at South Korean or Swedish-esque speeds, but surely the days of dealing with “slow Internet” should be behind us. This has to do with net neutrality. In taking the broadband stimulus money, the ISPs would have to agree not to “favor any lawful Internet applications and content over others.” So if AT&T, for example, strikes a deal with Video Site A instead of Video Site B, AT&T can’t turn around and give Video Site A preferred access to its network. That’s the crux of net neutrality, ISPs want to cut deals with their preferred partners at the expense of everyone else. It hampers innovation—Develop a cool Web site? Better cough up the bucks, otherwise people accessing it will be bitching about the slow speeds that’s entirely not your fault!—and rewards the smoke-filled-room shenanigans that have been a detriment to consumers for years.

Of course, no ISP will admit, on the record, to refusing stimulus money because they’re afraid of all the restrictions and unwanted attention.

Not that I’d worry about it: as we all know, the Market solves every single problem!